


Heartstrings

by amutemockingjay



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 04:34:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4773719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amutemockingjay/pseuds/amutemockingjay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Carolina loses her virginity to Maine and pretends not to have feelings about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartstrings

**Author's Note:**

> For all intents and purposes, 'Lina's name is Kessa, and Maine is Colby. I wanted to do some pre-Freelancer headcanon. Much thanks to AnneApocalypse for looking this over and being an amazing inspiration.

It was prom, and she wasn’t drunk. She always thought the whole “drinking on prom” was stupid bullshit--if she wanted to get drunk, she’d do so whenever she wanted, not because she had a desire to fulfill some sort of cliché. Originally, she wasn’t going to go to prom at all. It was everything she had ever hated about high school--people in sweaty clumps, dancing too close to each other; always, always someone was crying and some “famous” couple would break up and they’d get kicked out of the venue because there was vomit in the sink or cigarette smoke in the hotel ballroom.

Then she found the dress.

It was in the back of the attic, where she had been storming through, looking for her old gymnastics trophies. They weren’t there, of course. Probably her father had thrown them out. He paid for her lessons, especially as she got to Elite, but he wasn’t one to hold onto shit like that. He never even bothered to show up to her meets anymore. She had found the box, once white but now a yellowish, dusty non-color, and was intrigued. Slowly, she had pried the lid off. There was an old photograph on top, moth-eaten around the edges. In it, her father stood in the driveway of some nondescript suburban house, in an ill-fitting tux. His jet black hair hung in his eyes, and his glasses hung off his nose. He wore a wilting flower at his lapel, one that had been dyed a cyan blue, so fake-looking that she couldn’t help but wonder if it was plastic after all.

It was the second figure in the picture that brought a painful smack to the center of Kessa’s chest, rendering her unable to breathe. Her mom, blonde hair shining in the bright Texas sun, curled into ringlets that hung down her back. Kessa was so used to seeing her mom with short hair from the Marines that this looked unnatural, not right. She bet her mother must have hated it styled and stiff with hairspray. Kessa was surprised her mother even agreed to go to prom, and here she was, in a cyan dress that hugged tightly at the bodice and swept into a long, bell-shaped tulle skirt, dotted with rhinestones. Her father had his arm around her waist and even though she was pulling away, she was laughing, hitting him with the small corsage of flowers that should have been tied to her wrist. Kessa wondered what her mother would have felt that night. Dancing with her father--Kessa couldn’t imagine her father with any dance moves that were not a hazard to the people in his general vicinity. She wondered if her mother would have laughed anyway, and led him into a corner where he’d be less likely to induce bodily harm on everyone else. Kessa traced the outline of her mother’s figure in the photograph. Maybe, if she was still—

No. Kessa banished the thought, and turned her attention to the disintegrating tissue paper that covered the inside of the box. Brushing it aside, she encountered the cyan tulle. The dress lay flat in the box, with little damage. It was that, holding the dress up against her body and realizing it would fit, that changed her mind about prom. She would go, and she would wear her mother’s dress.

* * *

 

    “So, prom?” Kessa leaned up against Colby’s locker, effectively blocking him from reaching any of his textbooks until he paid attention to her.

“What about it?” Colby tried to get around her, but she was too quick for him. She always was.

“Don’t make me ask.”

“Ask what? Kess, you don’t want to go to prom.”

Colby reached up to brush back some of his hair, only to realized--for the umpteenth time--that it had been buzzed in preparation for Basic. They’d both gotten accepted into the UNSC Marines less than a week before.

“What if I did?” She challenged, hand on one hip.

“I would wonder what the hell happened to my best friend,” he fired back.

“Nothing,” Kessa snapped back, ignoring the hurt that welled just below her ribs. “I just--I found something. It was stupid. Whatever.”

“Hey.” Colby leaned over, so that his tall frame filled the space between her petite one. He cupped her chin in his hands and she wrenched away. “You want to go, really?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“Then we’ll go,” he said.

* * *

 

He was late. This was nothing new, he was always late, but Kessa couldn’t help but be pissed. Compulsive punctuality was something she was known for. She took a few deep breaths as she tried to calm down, the way she did before a meet.

Her father still wasn’t home yet. Probably working late in the lab again, and Kessa preferred it that way. She had no idea how he’d react to her wearing the dress, but didn’t want to stick around to find out. She didn’t want to fuck around when it came to her father’s temper. And anything to do with Allison was bound to light a fucking match and start a fire.

She grabbed her purse, and ran down the stairs, nearly tripping and falling in her haste to get out of the house. Locking the door behind her, she sunk onto the curb, skirts pooling around her ankles. This whole ladylike thing, this watching out for skirts and hems and making sure that she didn’t get anything dirty--this wasn’t her. Maybe this was a bad idea after all. Maybe she should go back inside, take off the dress, and find something better to do. Who was she kidding? There was nothing better to do in this suburban wasteland.

She came back into her thoughts as the limo pulled up, and Colby stuck his head out the sunroof, holding a bottle aloft.

“Come on, Kess,” he called, and she followed, slipping across the buttery leather and letting the car door shut behind her.

* * *

There was no excuse for it, not really. Neither of them were drunk. She had drank—she wasn’t going to lie. When the bottle came her way, she let the liquor burn her throat and warm her belly. Still, there wasn’t enough in her system to explain what happened.

The dance was everything she expected it to be. Sweaty, stale air mixed with a choking combination of different perfumes and colognes. Paper streamers and chunks of glitter decorated the otherwise ordinary gym. There was a crappy band that played covers of songs that were cool ten, fifteen years ago.

They had stood in a circle with friends, mostly from Kessa’s gymnastic group, exchanging compliments about dresses and flowers and hairstyles while the boys had rolled their eyes and shifted their weight from foot to foot, bored. Kessa herself was particularly bad at this kind of conversation, and moved on quickly.

It was strange going to something like this with Colby. He didn’t treat her like he treated any of his (many) girlfriends in the past, but going together made her feel self-conscious and vulnerable in a way that was both unusual and uncomfortable. The more Kessa tried to shrug off the feeling, the more it nagged at her. A slow dance started up, and Colby knocked back the last of his spiked drink.

“Want to dance?” He asked.

“This song?” Kessa gave him a pointed look.

“Yeah.”

He took her hand—casually—and led her to the center of the dance floor. She was nervous—and this was stupid, there was no reason for the breath she could never quite catch, the heightened senses. It was just Colby. Colby who she had known since she was five years old. Colby who was going into the Marines with her. Colby who always had her back, no matter what. She thought she knew everything there was to know about him, but this, this closeness, this feeling of his body against hers in an altogether different manner, this was new. His hand was on her waist, feeling the curve of it and the rippled, satin-y fabric. Her arms were around his neck, and she felt a tingling start at the arch of her foot that travelled up the length of her body. The places where he touched her began to burn and her head to swim with pleasant dizziness. She felt drawn towards him in a way that she had not before, a way that left her veins humming and the pit of her stomach swoop. She took a step back, breaking the connection between them.

“Kessa?”

“I just—I need some air. Or something. I don’t know.” She turned to flee, and he grabbed her hand.

“Are you okay?” He asked.

“Yes. No. Maybe. I just can’t breathe.”

“Let’s go take a walk,” he suggested.

Kessa nodded. A walk, she could handle. Or she thought she could, at least.

The Texas air was muggy and wrapped around her bare shoulders like an itchy wool blanket she couldn’t shrug off.

“So what’s going on?” Colby asked as the pair made their way down the dusty path that led to the football field.

Kessa’s throat tightened again. There was no way she could tell him how she felt in the gym. “I don’t know,” she mumbled.

“Come on, Kess, don’t bullshit me.”

“I’m not bullshitting you,” she snapped back with fierce venom. “Maybe I just don’t want to talk.”

“Then why the hell are we out here?” He stopped walking, and she did, too.

Because I couldn’t breathe being so close to you, she wanted to say. Because I feel things I shouldn’t around you. Because I—

“Like you really wanted to be back inside that fucking mess,” she replied.

He took a step closer to her. “Yeah, I did,” he said. “Because if we were back inside, I could do this.”

He kissed her. It caught her off-guard, a rarity, as she felt as though she could always predict what Colby was about to do. At first, she had the urge to step back, to refuse any sort of touch or intimacy. Her instinct was to run, but something kept her where she was, accepting his kiss, accepting his hand at the small of her back. The kiss deepened, and she found herself pressing up against him, wanting more. He was the one who broke apart, catching his breath that came in small pants.

“Still want to go back inside?” She said softly.

“I think I’d rather stay here,” he said, pulling her in for another kiss.

“Get into all kinds of trouble,” she murmured, his lips at the hollow of her collarbone.

“ ‘Xactly.”

She took his hand and dragged him towards the football field.

* * *

 

It was not the ideal location. Then again, she had never been a rose petals and feather bed kind of gal. Had Colby driven to prom instead of hiring a limo—a ridiculous gesture in Kessa’s opinion—they would have at least had a roof over their heads. Still, the spring night invited no rain, only a slight soupy breeze that brushed her skin.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to break into a car, or something?” Colby pointed to one of the beat up cars that sat in the student parking lot.

“Like you even could,” she said.

“I don’t know, maybe I could.”

“Maybe my ass.” Kessa sat down on the field, her skirts spread around her. She looked like Cinderella had gotten smashed and lost on her way to the ball. She removed her heels and wiggled her bare toes in the grass.

Colby settled next to her, wrapping an arm around her waist. She leaned against his tall frame, letting him envelope her completely. He began placing small, feather-light kisses along her shoulder. When his teeth scraped against her neck, she shivered and resisted the urge to cry out. One hand traveled north of her waist, cupping one of her breasts.

She leaned in and kissed him, allowing her hands to explore the muscles underneath his starched white shirt. Her nails lightly scraped against his skin and he shifted towards her, his hands moving from her breasts to her waist to her thighs, cloaked in layers of tulle. Impatiently, he tried to push aside the fabric to reach her thighs, and was going nowhere, fast. He broke the kiss.

“Jesus Christ, Kess, it’s like a fucking circus tent down here.”

She laughed; she couldn’t help it. “Take it off,” she said, wiggling around to reach the zipper.

“How?”

“Just unzip me. I’d be a dead woman if I got grass stains on it anyway.”

His hands were shaking as he unzipped the dress. When he got to the bottom, she stood up and stepped out of the dress, only in a strapless bra and underwear. She struggled with the bra and finally tossed it to one side with a vicious fling.

Colby was torn between staring at her form in the moonlight, appreciate every single bend and curve to her petite, athletic frame and looking away. She turned to face him, sinking back into the grass.

“Now you’re being modest?” She asked, green eyes snapping.

“I—I don’t know…”

She tossed back her flame-bright hair and laughed, a sound that he loved more than he could say. “It’s not that hard, really.”

He forced himself to take a deep breath. Her breasts, perky and small, were awfully distracting. “I know what I’m doing,” he said.

She set her chin in a determined line. “Prove it.”

He could never back down from a challenge. “I will, then.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine.”

He leaned in. “Fine.”

There was a pause. Both looked at each other, and then looked away. Finally, Colby looked down at the grass. His voice was barely audible when he murmured. “Now what?”

“Now you fuck me,” she said, with an edge to her voice.

Colby shook his head. He didn’t want to fuck her—at least, not like that. He wanted something more than just fucking, god help him. And he had no idea where to start. There was a pause, and Kessa ran one hand through her hair. She put two and two together quickly enough regarding his silence.

“Wait—you have to be fucking kidding me. All those girls, and you never slept with any of them?!”

He could barely nod his assent.

Kessa grabbed his hand roughly, and placed it between her legs. She was slick and wet and ready. Colby explored with his fingers, not entirely sure what he was looking for, but damn, he was going to try and look like he knew what he was doing.

She seized his hand in a grip of iron. “Like this,” she said, guiding him to her clit and rubbing.

“Take this damn thing off,” he growled, pulling her underwear down past her hips. She yanked the fabric down and stepped out of it, tossing it to one side.

He reached for her again, fumbling at first but building a slow rhythm. Kessa guided him, placing her hand on top of his.

“Not so hard,” she said, barely a whisper.

“Okay,” he replied. He adjusted the pressure. “Better?”

She closed her eyes, leaning back and pushing herself against him. Her words were barely audible. “Yes, please, more of that.” She let out a small moan, and he wanted her so fucking badly in that moment—to be able to push inside her and give her everything….

Kessa let out a small, sharp squeal and suddenly her body relaxed, sweat sticking her hair to her forehead and back.

“I think I just came,” she murmured.

“You think, or you know?”

Her eyes snapped with wickedness. “You could always do it again and we could find out.”

Did he ever want to. He paused, his fingers just barely touching her clit and she wiggled her hips with impatience.

“More,” she demanded. “You’re barely touching me.”

“Is this how this is going to go, then, you bossing me around?” He increased the pressure, slightly, and then pulled away. Kessa frowned.

“That’s what our entire relationship has consisted of, C. Did you expect anything else?”

“Not really,” he admitted. He leaned in and gave her a brief kiss. “And I’m done using my hands.”

* * *

 

It wasn’t perfect. Far from it. There were no romantic words whispered against the backdrop of moonlight and grass. No big emotional fanfare like in every teen novel she had devoured in the back of the library, a guilty pleasure she wouldn’t admit to out loud.

Instead, when the time had come, she had frozen. She took one look at him and shook her head.

“I really don’t see how this is going to work,” she said. “You’re so…”

“Big,” he finished the sentence for her. “And you’re so little.”

“Maybe I should be on top,” she suggested.

“Yeah.” He reached over and smoothed back her hair. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely,” she said, climbing onto his lap.

He kissed her, tenderly. “I just need to make sure this is what you want.”

“I appreciate your consideration but I just really want you to fuck me right now.”

He kissed the hollow of her collarbone. She grabbed a hold of him, slowly stroking him from base to tip. He groaned.

“Kess, if you keep doing that, it’ll be over before it begins.”

“Then I guess I better do this,” she said, slowly pushing herself against him until she could feel him inside her. He began to move and she winced.

“Ow, ow, ow, fucking ow.”

He stopped instantly. “I’m not going to do this if I’m hurting you.”

She pressed herself further against him, inviting movement. “It’s not going to be goddamn easy the first time. Just keep going.”

“Are you sure?”

“C, if I was any more sure, well, I don’t fucking know but you’d be aware of it.”

He leaned in and kissed her, slowly at first but deepening the kiss as she met her tongue with his. He began to move again, and she arched her back in response.

“Better,” she murmured, sweat casting a sheen on her skin. “Much better. Keep going. Please.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“A little. But not much.”

The more he moved within her, the greater the pleasure was, catching him by surprise in undulating waves. Still, he wanted her to feel just as much as he was, and so he reached for her, stroking her clit with the pad of his thumb.

Her breath came in a low hiss. “No,” she mumbled.

He removed his hand with some difficulty. “What’s wrong?”

“Too sensitive,” she said. “Just concentrate on you. I already got off.”

“But—“

She stopped his words with another kiss. “No buts. I’m too swollen to come again. It’s all you. Now close your eyes.”

He shook his head. “Never. You’re so beautiful I don’t want to miss a second.”

She began to build up an uneven rhythm as she rode him. “I’ll take that as the cliché it was,” she said, and focused all of her attention on him. It wasn’t long before the pressure built up in his body threatened to overflow.

“Kessa,” he said. He reached out and cupped one of her breasts, stroking the nipple. “Ah, Kessa—“

He rode out the feeling until everything blurred and he came, holding onto her, completely lost in her hair, her skin, her scent of vanilla lotion that mingled with sweat and the grass of the football field. She recovered quicker than he did, extracting herself from him and standing up. He blinked, trying to get his bearings again.

“Colby,” she said, and he attuned himself to her voice, trying to drown out the rushing in his ears. There was a serious expression on her face, and he wondered if she was going to say those Three Little Words to him. It was an opportune moment, certainly, and he didn’t even have to wonder if he would say them back. He already knew.

“Colby,” she repeated. “Colby, I’m hungry.”

* * *

 

So they spent the rest of their prom night, her in her princess dress and him in a tux, walking to the Tastee-D-Lite. Eventually her feet hurt from the heels and he piggy backed her the rest of the way, their laughter echoing against the star-scattered sky. It was the best frozen yogurt he had tasted in his life.

As they sat on the outdoor benches long past the parlor’s closing, and watched the sunrise, he realized that the Three Little Words weren’t necessary.

He was already there.


End file.
